After her role in the fantasy series, the actor felt lost. Now she’s getting relationship advice from Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, and following a Sex and the City star’s mantra: never be anywhere you aren’t enjoying yourself

Maisie Williams has dabbled in witchcraft exactly once. The actor was getting ready to audition for a part in a film. “I wanted it so badly that I went on to Etsy, and I paid a witch to manifest me the role,” she says, poker-faced.

“It didn’t work, and that was where my days of witchcraft ended,” she adds, breaking into an infectious cackle.

Police received information nearly immediately after the killing. It took Las Vegas police 27 years to make an arrest

For years, US law enforcement officials blamed their failure to solve hip-hop star Tupac Shakur’s murder on the lack of cooperation from key witnesses, and on gang members’ “snitches get stitches” culture.

But testimony in a much-delayed murder trial, which concluded this week, almost 30 years after Shakur’s death, highlighted just how much law enforcement officials knew about the shooting, and how early.

Thoughtful, clever cooking that errs on the side of tasty

Amid all the bunting and hoopla of the platinum jubilee back in 2022, you may well have missed that Colchester, Britain’s oldest recorded settlement, got an upgrade from town to city status. And, as we all know, no true city is complete without at least one fancy restaurant that serves the likes of duck liver mousse on lattice tuiles. Well, in Colchester, Kintsu takes that slot.

Or at least it did until May 2025, when chef Paul Wendholt abruptly shut up shop, citing financial pressures. The name Kintsu plays on the term kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold, silver or platinum or, more commonly, of embracing imperfection and making something pleasing out of bad luck. So it’s rather fitting that Wendholt, a two-time winner of the Essex Chef of the Year gong, managed to reopen Kintsu just four months later, and a year on is now offering eight courses, plus a few extras, for £90 a head in a Grade II-listed building, albeit one that’s down a back lane beside a multi-storey NCP car park. The setting will win no beauty contests, but when a man is so determined to cook dinner, it feels churlish to ignore him. Come for the secure parking, stay for the treacle-cured Dingley Dell pork from nearby Suffolk and the Colchester cherries with amaretto.

The Gallagher brothers’ comeback concerts are given the full fan-worship treatment, but it’s impossible to begrudge the euphoria they have created

“Hello … hello … It’s good to be back.” With these words – and the unfortunate possibility of a royalty payment to a certain disgraced ex-pop star – this highly enjoyable fan-worship documentary revives the memory of last year’s staggering and already mythic Oasis reunion tour. It also recollects how effortlessly funny the Gallagher brothers are, like a great comic double act. There’s a big laugh in the tense scene in the rehearsal room, when Liam finally shows up after Noel and everyone else had been there for hours – and the very first thing that comes out of his mouth is a fierce and magnificently sullen objection to the baffles on the drum kit: “They’re giving me the hump.”

Yet to the surprise of many who did not believe, and these biblical echoes are strangely appropriate, Liam and Noel did not fall out; the resulting stadium tour put a fresh coat of paint on the word “phenomenon”. Middle-aged and elderly people together with young people sporting bucket hats, some accompanied by their pets in bucket hats, sang their hearts out as if it was the 90s again and Manchester City had just won the World Cup 10-0 (although this film was evidently completed before Wonderwall’s moment at this year’s World Cup).

In this bizarre new gameshow, you will encounter John Bercow doing topless karaoke while tossing glitter at pensioners and Joey Essex pounding on the walls of a shipping container. Why? Who knows!

What is The Box? It is easier, perhaps, to list the things The Box is not, if only to give ourselves something to cling to when the more recognisable trappings start to wobble, the floor gives way and we find ourselves in a tent with Joey Essex, watching in silence as a topless John Bercow hurls glitter at an audience of braying pensioners.

So. Some things The Box is not: a sitcom; a medical drama; a property show presented by sockless men with teeth that follow you around the room; a thing about badgers. Beyond this, however, we are on our own. The opening titles do little to assist. “10 BOXES” booms a caption as the camera swoops over a collection of giant yellow containers strapped to the back of a flatbed lorry. “10 CONTESTANTS” it continues, as a montage of coming attractions reveals footage of Graeme Souness squinting at an egg and a member of JLS running towards some trees. And, finally, a distinctly disobliging caption that is nevertheless pivotal to the wilfully befuddling modus operandi of this six-part series: “NO HELP”. Bloody hell. Or rather, “bløødy hell”, because The Box is a Norwegian format so something may have been lost in translation. Anyway, shh, because it’s episode one and here is Gary Lineker.

Social media, mental health problems, the pandemic and financial instability all contribute to the phenomenon

On Tess Lavanda’s YouTube channel there is one video with substantially more views than the rest: it is titled “I don’t have any friends” and has been watched more than half a million times since she posted it a month ago.

Over on Instagram she has posted dozens of reels with titles like “I turned 22 alone”, “Living alone in London” and “Feeling alone this summer is OK”, each garnering thousands of views and hundreds of comments, many from people feeling the same way.

Serhii Beskrestnov says deadlock on frontline and increasing use of deep strikes is placing civilians and infrastructure at greater risk

Russia and Ukraine are locked in an escalating war of long-range strikes with a growing risk to civilians in which neither side can entirely prevail, according to Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s defence technology adviser.

Serhii Beskrestnov, widely known by his call sign, Flash, said he was worried about the prospects for Kyiv this winter, and suggested elderly people should be evacuated in case Russian bombing were to knock out the capital’s energy supply.

Taraneh Rahimi was told prison guards would rape her sister, Romina, if she did not sign a confession

The twins were 19 and still in high school when they were taken from their beds in the dead of night by masked men later identified as being sent by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

After four months of desperately seeking news from hospitals and state institutions, their mother, Marzieh Nourmohammadi, finally learned their fate. Taraneh and Romina Rahimi had been seized over their decision to join millions on the streets of Iranian cities during the January protests against the regime. The twins were unrecognisable by the time of their mother’s prison visit in May.

Sources indicate some members states will not enforce EES biometric controls after 6 September deadline

• What are the new EU border checks and how will they affect your holiday?

Travellers to the EU could face renewed border queues as flexibility measures for the bloc’s entry-exit system officially come to an end – although numerous sources have indicated that some member states will not enforce biometric checks.

Airlines last week called on the European Commission to extend discretionary powers to pause EES controls when necessary until the end of 2026, with the deadline for “flexibility” passing on 6 September.

Exclusive: Tan Dhesi says Argentinian threats make it more crucial than ever that PM increase defence spending

Javier Milei’s threats to the Falkland Islands make it even more important that Andy Burnham increase defence spending immediately, according to the Labour chair of the defence committee.

Tan Dhesi said the comments by the Argentinian president this week show why the government should raise military spending to 3% of GDP by 2030. But he said Burnham’s plans remain mired in confusion after the prime minister appeared to reassure him that the 2030 target would be hit, only for Downing Street to later retreat.